tYotP: J

This post is part of the Year of the Purge : A to Z series. Every other Sunday, I’ll get rid of something starting with the letter A and working my way to the letter Z by the end of December. This week I’m getting rid of J.

J is for…

Narcolepsy

Wikipedia says that narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder (a dyssomnia) characterized by overwhelming drowsiness and sudden attacks of sleep. It was heavily exploited as a comedic prop in the Deuce Bigelow Male Gigolo movie. It’s also the behavior Blathers exhibits in AC:CF when you talk to him during the day. But come on, he’s an owl. 

Sorry about that.

Narcolepsy is also what my mom has recently been diagnosed with having. Of course, this is no laughing matter, but when she told me I couldn’t stop laughing just thinking about all the stupid things they do in that movie. Of course, my mom was all like: “Why are you laughing? Why are YOU LAUGHING?” but she started laughing and we both laughed on the phone for a good 2 minutes. Like I said, no laughing matter. Still I laughed.

Death

I really can’t recall all the times I laughed at death. When my grandfather Barbu died, my cousin and myself almost peed our pants in church. I don’t really remember what was said, but it was damn funny. Recently when SheilaCSR told me her cousin got hit with a golf ball and was drifting in and out of a coma, I was sad. When I learned that he was 25, I said: “Well, he had a good run”. And we laughed. Another time, one of my teacher’s dad – I was 16 – died. My teacher was also a Deacon and part of the Salesians of Don Bosco community that ran my high school. Of course, we went to the wake. During the wake, the whole community was there and started saying Hail Marys. I think they were saying 20+ Hail Mary in a row. After 6-7, I leaned over to my best friend and said: “They’re all priests, don’t they know other prayers?” We were trying not to laugh but were shaking in the process, and one of the priests thought we were crying and comforted us. I think to this day, he doesn’t know we were laughing not crying.

Customer service

When I started working here, they gave us workshop on how to excel at customer service. part of it was “sensitivity training” dealing with mentally and physically challenged individuals. When asked if we should volunteer helping the person carry stuff to his car, I said: “I would volunteer help since I’m sure the car is parked close to the door”. Apparently, we shouldn’t say that. But that instructor was human, because she then gave this example:

“A person missing his left hand walks in the library and asks to see the rare book collection. Now the policy says everyone who handles the rare books has to wear special gloves. Would you give that person one glove, two gloves, and what would you tell the person?”

Of course, I instantly raised my hand (har har) and said: (Can you guess?) ”Do you need a hand?”

The instructor laughed so hard she cried.

Anyways

If you didn’t guess, J is for joking (at inappropriate times). Of course, all those stories are freakin’ hilarious, so I’ll probably still think like that all the time, but at least I’ll try to keep those thoughts to myself – and blog about them of course.

This might be my biggest challenge yet.

Hi, I’m Mike, and I’m a joke-aholic.